The Curious Script
The people who had taken to steeping two bags at a time had one complaint. Drop two bags of Starlight Green Tea into the water and the flavor turned so strong it left the tongue tingling and numb—like an Americano buried under an absurd pile of extra shots. Strong enough to give you a headache.
The proper dose was one tea bag to a paper cup. Chase a stronger effect, though, and in went a second bag, and then the taste had no choice but to turn heavy. Pour in more water to thin it out, and the original effect vanished with the flavor.
"That's not a bad idea. Energy-drink companies adjust how much taurine they put in. We ought to do the same with Starlight Green Tea and release it with the amount of hair carefully controlled."
"The energy-drink makers already took a serious hit because of our tea. They're going to take an even bigger one, aren't they?"
Since Starlight Green Tea had launched, energy-drink sales had fallen across the board. Drink the tea and you got everything an energy drink offered, with comparatively fewer side effects.
The price was a flaw, certainly. Even so, it had bitten into their revenue. Supply was tight; limited stock or not, the companies that made energy drinks had watched more than twenty percent of their sales blow away.
An improved version of the tea would strike them far harder still. Figures had just been released on what people in finance and shift work were actually drinking.
Starlight Green Tea already held half the market, and this month it had long since pushed past that mark. Set that beside the days when the tea had held no share at all, and a ratio like this hardly made sense.
"Since when has our company watched other firms for permission?"
Kim Sehee said it over a sip of the Starlight Green Tea set on the conference table. Given the power of the Starlight Guild itself, fretting over other companies would have been the strange thing.
"That's true."
"So what do we do about the price...?"
The moment the most important item landed, the executives were busy reading one another's faces. Predicting a consumer's heart was the hardest work of all, and setting a price on the improved tea was no small headache.
Price it wrong and the sales failed to appear, and the blame could be shoved onto whoever had spoken up.
But Kim Sehee had long forgiven mistakes of that kind, so the executives traded opinions freely.
"The raw materials going into the tea are decreasing, so wouldn't it be better to bring the price of Starlight Green Tea down a little?"
"Less raw material is no reason to stop holding the price. Frankly, the customers who already steep two bags might even pay more."
"Even so, ten thousand won for a single cup of Starlight Green Tea is a real burden."
While the executives pressed on through their marathon meeting, Kim Sehee stared blankly at a single photo on her phone. Her head was already full of going to see Hana once today's meeting ended. Should she buy the snacks Hana liked? Or sweet, delicious candy?
"Chairman?"
She was sitting there in a daze when one of the executives called to her, and Kim Sehee startled. She had been far too lost in Hana's photo. There was no hiding the embarrassment.
"Ah! Yes?"
"We were wondering how you'd like the price set..."
The final say belonged to the chairman. Kim Sehee cleared her throat and looked over the proposals.
One camp wanted to sell it at 10,000 won. The other wanted 9,500, and the two sides were locked in a fight. Because the tea took exactly twice as much of Hana's hair, ten thousand won looked reasonable.
Twice the hair went in, yes—but the other raw materials had decreased, and the number of units they could sell had fallen with them. Factor in the labor costs saved by that, and some discount was called for.
Kim Sehee thought long and hard. The first price you set mattered most. Chin resting on her hand, she deliberated, and then she decided.
"Let's go with 9,500 won. If you think about how consumers feel a price, ten thousand is simply too expensive. Our brand is getting famous, but we don't have the name value of a luxury house yet."
Once Kim Sehee delivered the verdict, the executives stopped fighting and followed their chairman's word.
"Hm-hm-hmm~"
I hummed as I scribbled away with all my might. In a notebook printed with an adorable little character, I was copying the lyrics of the new Little Magician Rumi song that had come out today. Nothing beat this for practicing Hangul. If I was going to study, it was better when the studying was fun.
I made up my mind to buy a notebook with Rumi's illustrations later. The one I had now was cute enough, but I wanted Rumi on the cover even more.
"Ah!"
I had been writing in such a daze that what landed on the page wasn't Hangul at all, but the strange script I used to write long ago. Beneath those odd characters, Rumi's lyrics were written out in Korean—like an English song with a Korean translation printed underneath.
Before I knew it I had filled an entire notebook with Rumi's lyrics, so I threw it out without a second thought. I had notebooks to spare, more than I could count. Aside from Korean, the other subjects came so easily I could score a perfect hundred without breaking a sweat, so Korean was the only thing I studied like my life depended on it.
Everything but Korean—math, science, the memorization subjects—was far too easy. In math, the hardest problem on offer was adding two three-digit numbers. I could solve them at a glance. Science and the rest I could memorize after a single skim.
Of course, I never once thought of showing Haru or Bora the notebook I had used for Korean practice. I tossed it in the trash. I didn't want anyone catching me secretly studying Korean. Getting easy Hangul wrong felt somehow embarrassing.
And so the notebook full of that strange script was thrown out in the garbage yard behind the building.
Seon Jinpil, a graduate student in the Gate Language department at Hankuk University, had come to visit the place where his father worked. His father ran a scrap yard.
When he was little, Seon Jinpil had been ashamed that his father made a living in scrap. That had been nothing but childish pride.
His father had supported him in every way he could so that Seon Jinpil might attend Hankuk University, the finest university in the country. Knowing what that effort had cost, Seon Jinpil had studied until his nose bled, and he had gotten in.
The trouble was that he caught the eye of Park Guil, a professor in the Gate Language department, and was swept straight into graduate school. A bad ending.
Anyway, to be of some help to the father who ran the scrap yard, Seon Jinpil came down from time to time and lent a hand. His father didn't work all that far away, and coming out on his days off to help was Seon Jinpil's only hobby. While he was sorting wastepaper, though, he noticed a strange notebook.
On the cover of a notebook printed with a cute character fit for an elementary schooler, the language of the Gates—the very script he was studying—had been written.
"What is this...?"
Seon Jinpil was startled to find the Gate Language he studied written across the notebook. Had someone with peculiar tastes filled it with Gate Language? Curiosity got the better of him, and he opened it. Inside, packed tight, was the Gate Language he had been studying all this time.
And beneath it, as if the script had been deciphered, the meaning was written in Korean. Seon Jinpil's eyes went wide. Gate Language was still an undeciphered alien script, and here it sat, interpreted into Korean as bold as you please.
"Who pulls a prank like this?"
Gate Language had never been translated into Korean. It hadn't been translated anywhere in the world.
The characters were difficult and bizarre, and reading them was hard. It also hadn't been all that long since Gate Language was discovered.
And the humanoid monsters found so far couldn't write at all. Even so, just in case, Seon Jinpil carefully put the notebook away and resolved to take it back to school and show it to his professor.
If this interpretation was real, it was the kind of discovery that would turn the academic world upside down.